Marcus Pactor will present discussion Jan. 15

After a holiday hiatus, the Friends of the Ponte Vedra Library’s Book Talk Café program resumes with two authors on two consecutive nights.

New York Times bestselling author Steve Berry appears at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 14 to talk about his latest stand-alone thriller, “The Columbus Affair,” as well as his next Cotton Malone adventure, “The King’s Deception,” due out in May.

This will be the third year in a row that Berry has launched the new season of Book Talk Café programs with discussions of his international thrillers.

Berry’s books have been translated into 40 languages with more than 14 million copies printed in 51 countries.

He’s a founding member of International Thriller Writers, and served as its co-president for three years.

Marcus Pactor will follow Berry the next evening at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 15.

Pactor is the author of “Vs. Death Noises,” a new short story collection filled with characters burdened with loss, uneasy love and an unceasing hunger to find meaning in their lives. Pactor will do a reading and discuss his stories at the Ponte Vedra Library, 101 Library Blvd., from A1A North, in Ponte Vedra Beach.

Pactor’s collection won the 2011 Subito Press Prize for Fiction. His short stories have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Award. He teaches at the University of North Florida and his stories have appeared in Conte, The Minnesota Review, River Oak Review, Caveat Lector and The West Wind Review.

Book talk Café is a presentation of the Friends of the Ponte Vedra Library. In future months, Book Talk Café will present award-winning authors Diana Abu-Jaber (Birds of Paradise) and Florida Book Award winner, Elizabeth Stuckey-French (The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady).